


Long Live--Part 1

by LaVieEnRose



Series: Long Live [1]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: CF, Chronic Illness, Disability, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Long, M/M, Multi, Romance, Slow Burn, cystic fibrosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: No one:Absolutely no one:Absolutely no one who has ever lived:Me: What if I rewrite the entire series but give Justin cystic fibrosisSeason 1.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Long Live [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015032
Comments: 68
Kudos: 141





	Long Live--Part 1

Justin Taylor often has to stop and catch his breath. 

It's not something he gives much thought, after seventeen years on this planet, but other people sometimes notice. He'll be walking next to them and all of a sudden they'll turn to him and he's not there, because he's a few feet back, his hand on a wall, catching his breath. 

He doesn't really notice it tonight, when he stops to lean against a streetlight after half an hour of wandering Liberty Avenue being too chickenshit to go in anywhere or talk to anyone. 

But Brian Kinney does.

Brian Kinney. Justin gets his first name when he's in the passenger seat of Brian's Jeep, the world flying by, and the last from a piece of mail on Brian's kitchen counter. But when he steps up to Justin hours before on Liberty Avenue, all Justin knows about him is that he's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. 

“Doing okay?” Brian says, like he's known him for years, and Justin, who's been asked that question about a thousand times in his seventeen years, maybe really hears it for the first time. 

“I'm good,” he says. 

The edge of Brian's mouth quirks up. “Good.”

**

It's not a secret. It's never been a secret; Justin doesn't do that shit. You don't spend your whole life sick and carry around all that much embarrassment about it, even when it's a disease that's objectively pretty gross. That's fictional shit, and if Justin's learned one thing from a lucky forty-four hospital admissions, from an uncountable number of nights staying up gasping, his mother's hands pounding on his back, it's that this is really, really not fictional. 

It's not a secret, but it's not exactly sexy, so it doesn't even cross his mind to tell his one night stand about it, any more than to tell him about his parents' marital problems or his disappointing grades in AP Calc.

Brian's apartment is bare and sterile and Justin feels more at home than he ever has. 

And then Brian's tongue is in his mouth and oh, no. Now. Now he does.

**

Then the phone rings.

Brian tries to kick him out, finds out he lives with his parents, squints at him like he's seeing him for the first time and says, “How old are you?”

“Middle-aged,” Justin says, which isn't a joke, but Brian snorts. “Over the age of consent,” he adds.

Brian rolls his eyes. “So you're seventeen.”

“Should I be concerned you know the age of consent?”

“Only if you're worried about my childhood trauma.”

Justin, suddenly and starkly, is.

But Brian just kisses him and pulls his shirt on. “Get dressed,” he says. “You can come to the hospital.”

**

And then they're at Allegheny General, a place Justin knows like the back of his hand. He resists the urge to point out the best parking and enjoys Michael, Brian's friend, passive-aggressively complaining about being stuck in the backseat. 

“Where the fuck is maternity...” Brian says, scanning a sign at the entrance. Justin knows—during long hospital stays he likes to sneak down and look at the babies in the nursery—but keeps his mouth shut. 

They run down the halls, and Justin's hideously out of breath, but he apologizes to his lungs and promises them lots of rest after and they mostly behave themselves in return. “Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?” he asks Brian.

“Yes,” Brian says.

Michael rolls his eyes. “It's a boy.”

“Hey,” Brian says.

“He's about to find out anyway! I realize mystique is part of your game plan, or whatever.”

“You wouldn't know Mystique from Catwoman,” Brian says, and he bounces off Justin a little bit as they run.

Justin, as far as he knows, has never met a lesbian before, and now he's in a room with fifteen of them. They fawn over him as much as the baby, and before he knows it he's having his palm read and snacks shoved his way because about twelve of the fifteen have told him he's too skinny. As much as his heart is throbbing with _Brian Brian Brian,_ he doesn't mind when Brian and Michael disappear and he's left down here to be smothered by a horde of strange women. He doesn't usually like being coddled, but this feels different. They don't know he's sick. They think it's incredible that he wants to be an artist. They want to make sure he knows not to get hurt by _that Brian,_ as if anything or anyone can hurt Justin anymore, besides his father, besides his body.

He's smothering a coughing fit into the inside of his elbow when Brian comes along and grabs him by the ear. “Come on, shrimp.”

Justin's allergic to shrimp. He laughs. 

Brian's clearly taken something, and he's all over Justin in the car, eyes and hands and mouth, but that's nothing compared to when they're back at the apartment. 

It is, to put it plainly, everything Justin imagined, and about fifty different feelings he didn't know his body could have. Brian's hands are so gentle, so sure, cupping the back of his head and gripping his hip bones at the small of his back. “So skinny,” Brian says softly, admonishing. 

“I'm okay.”

Brian kisses the way most people breathe. Like he can't even help it. Justin has seen too many movies and was worried that the first guy he slept with, the handsome stranger who would sweep him off his feet, wouldn't kiss him on the mouth, but Brian inhales him. 

Justin sees colors he didn't know existed.

“Scratchy breathing,” Brian mumbles, when they're falling asleep, Brian's head on Justin's chest, their legs tangled up with the bed sheets and each other.

“Shh, go to sleep,” Justin says, and Brian does.

**

They're not entwined anymore when Justin wakes up. 

He gets up and feels shaky, sore, and for the first time in his life it's for a good reason. He takes his meds he'd slipped into his jacket pocket before he left home, drinks some water from the sink with cupped hands—it feels too intimate, too forward, to use the small glass Brian has by the tap, which is strange since their mouths were just on every inch of each other—and falls into a typical morning coughing fit. He muffles it with tissues and tries to be quiet, but when he finishes and opens the bathroom door, Brian's staring at him, bleary-eyed and wild-haired.

“Good morning,” Justin says awkwardly.

“The fuck is wrong with you?”

“Allergies,” Justin says, which isn't technically a lie, since he does have enough allergies to fill a page front and back. “How'd you sleep?”

Brian blinks at him and then turns and looks around the desecrated remains of the loft. “Christ, what the fuck did I do?”

“Various feats of strength.”

“God.” He runs his hands down his face. “I feel worse than I did after Fish Friday at the diner.”

“That a euphemism?”

“For snatch? Believe it or not, I wish. What did I even take?”

“Couldn't tell you.” Justin feels a little wobbly, and he holds onto the bathroom doorway for support, trying to look casual. 

“Did you take any, are you all right?”

“No, I don't do drugs. For reasons such as these.”

“Of course, I manage to bring home the only abstinent teenager on the fucking planet.”

Justin sits on the foot of the bed. “I wouldn't say abstinent.”

“Well, not anymore, anyway.” Brian gives him a small smile and takes a sip from the bottle of water by the bed. Justin wants to draw him very badly, which is how he knows he needs to get out of here. But Brian says, “Do you need a shower?”

Brian's all the way inside of him, Justin's chest pressed against the shower glass, when he says, “Oh my fucking shit I had a baby.”

Justin can't remember the last time he laughed this hard, and Brian's hand flattens across his back.

**

“What did he look like?” Daphne says, her legs dangling over the football field. “Give me a celebrity comparison.”

“There's no comparison,” Justin says, overdramatic for effect. “He's the celebrity.”

“God, you really are gay.”

“I'm telling you, I had no idea sex was like that. Everyone makes it sound so clinical and...I guess I understand why, though. There aren't words.”

“That's not helpful to me.”

“Sorry. No words.”

Daphne leans back against the stone wall. “What'd you tell your parents?”

“That I was sleeping over at Leo's house. Six feet away from him.” Leo's a hospital friend, and rules dictate that he and Justin can't be close enough to pass germs back and forth to each other. They don't always toe the line, but they try to. They both take health stuff seriously but casually, which is a nice relief from the other teenagers he meets in the ward, who are all angsty and bitter and rebellious and exhausting. 

“So are you going to see him again?” Daphne says.

“I doubt it. I don't think anyone picks up a stranger off the street looking for a long-term commitment. It's not what I was out there for, anyway.”

“But you looooove him.”

“I do. Madly. Head over heels. I'm writing sonnets.”

“God, you're annoying.”

Justin laughs. “I don't want a relationship.”

“Don't tell me this is some _I don't want to burden someone with my disease_ bullshit.”

“Ew, no, I don't care about that. I love burdening people with my tragic life. More people at the funeral that way.”

“Don't talk like that.”

Healthy people never let him get away with that shit. He and Leo make jokes all the time. “I just don't see the point of starting something up with someone a year before I leave for college. And I'm not going to be some pathetic kid who tries to tie down the first guy he sleeps with. He's older, he's got a kid, he's got a life, it's...we're not compatible. At all.” 

“Except sexually,” Daphne says.

“God. Except sexually.” And, truthfully, he was nice to talk to. He picked up on Justin's jokes and Justin picked up on his. It sounds small, but it matters. It's why he and Daphne work, after all. “I can tell you what I do want.”

“All right.”

“I want to go back to Liberty Avenue,” Justin says. “I want to paint the way the rainbow lights shine on the rafters. And I want to be, like...a part of the scenery.”

“You just want to meet more Brians.”

“There aren't other Brians,” Justin says, without meaning to. 

**

It's a few days before Justin can go back out, though. He wants to see what Liberty Avenue looks like during the day, so he tries to sneak out at around 2 PM on a Saturday, and when his dad catches him he can't think of a lie fast enough when asked where he's going. “Nowhere,” he just says.

“Let's go to the driving range,” Craig says.

Justin hates the driving range almost as much as he hates quality time with his father, but what can he say? He sits in the passenger seat of his dad's company car and stares out the window and counts months until he'll be away at school. Maybe he'll throw a funeral for Straight Justin. The macabre of that could be fun.

They hit balls for a while, and Justin's busy imagining the dimpled white surface is the face of every homophobe at St. James Academy when his father says, “Ugh, look at that.”

It's two men, a few tees over. One has his hands on the others' hips to adjust his stance.

The irony is, they might not even be a couple. They could just be two straight guys who are comfortable with themselves and each other, a concept Craig could never imagine.

“They should just round them up and put them on an island,” Craig says. 

Justin says nothing.

**

He's not feeling well the next few days, so all thoughts of going back out on the town are put on hold, for a little while. He stays home from school and draws the view of the street from his bedroom window, and draws his mother and his sister from memory, and then, on a whim, tries drawing Brian. He doesn't get his nose right, but he captures something about his eyes.

Jennifer raps on his open door, when he's sitting cross-legged on his bed with his vest and his nebulizer, watching MTV and studying the anatomy of the writhing girls in bikinis, so he'll be able to capture their musculature better. No wonder his mother thinks he's straight. “I'm taking your sister out for burgers,” she says. “What can I bring you?”

He takes a pull on the nebulizer and lets his breath out slowly. “I'm not hungry.”

She gives him a look. “You have to eat.”

“I could do a milkshake,” he says.

Jennifer nods and comes over and kisses his forehead. She glances at the pill bottles on the dresser. “Those look low. Do you need me to stop by the pharmacy?” Justin usually handles picking up his own medications, has since he was old enough to drive, but he'll let himself be babied a little when he really feels like shit. And today just sucks.

Still, it's unnecessary this time. “No, I have another bottle.”

Except once she's gone and the breathing treatment's over he gets up to look for them and they're nowhere to be found. He tears about the bedroom and the bathroom, first in confusion, then in mounting dread as he realizes where the pills have to be.

“Oh God. Oh no.”

Brian's.

**

Justin starts on the corner where he and Brian first locked eyes, in case the universe is really on his side tonight, but there's no sign of Brian, just several leering men who don't seem to care that he looks like he's on the brink of death. Good to know. 

He's walking aimlessly, trying to find any alternative to showing up at his one-night-stand's place unannounced a week later, especially when he's not exactly sure where it is, when he passes the Liberty Diner. He remembers Brian mentioning this place, so maybe he's here. It's a long shot, but it also looks warm and inviting and Justin really would like to sit down. 

“Oh, not you,” a voice says as soon as he walks in, but it sounds teasing, friendly. Justin looks, and there's Michael sitting at the counter, a half-eaten chicken fried steak on the plate in front of him. 

Justin slides onto the stool next to him, breathing more heavily than he would like. “Hey.”

“Hey. Please don't tell me you're looking for Brian.”

“Um, actually—” 

“Oh, Lord.” Michael shakes his head sadly, his mouth full. “You poor son of a bitch.”

“It's not like that.”

“Trust me, with Brian, it's always like that.” He sighs. “Look, you seem like a nice kid and all, but Brian doesn't really do repeats.” 

“I left something at his apartment,” Justin says.

“Oh, that old trick.”

“Do you have his phone number? I need to just text him and meet him somewhere and get it back.” It's embarrassing, sure, but it's also kind of crucial. Insurance isn't going to pay for a new bottle of pills before his prescription says he's due, so if he doesn't get them back from Brian his choices are groveling on the phone with the pharmacy for hours and having his parents scold him for being a careless shit or...dying. He doesn't love either. 

Michael puts his hands up. “I'm not enabling this.”

“How about enabling me getting my possessions back, anything there?”

Michael gets off the stool. “I'm going to the bathroom,” he says. “With my phone.”

Justin slumps over the counter as Michael leaves and falls into a coughing fit that he muffles into a napkin. A redheaded waitress appears and sets down a cup of tea.

“Thank you,” Justin says.

“Cough like that, you shouldn't be out wandering around. Even with a cute little face like yours.”

He fixes his expression into a smile. He is so, so used to strange women fussing over him, and this time she isn't interested in his art or the lines on his palm. Just the way he breathes. It gets so old, older than his bones.

“What's your name, Sunshine?” she says.

“Justin.” 

“Justin.” She nods a little. “Your parents know where you are?”

“Please.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She gestures at the empty stool. “You a friend of Michael's?”

“Sort of. I'm actually looking for Brian Kinney. Do you know him?”

She laughs and nudges the tea cup towards him. “Oh, honey. Everybody's looking for Brian.”

Justin wheezes out a sigh, and the waitress—Debbie, her name tag says Debbie—gives him a wry glance and writes something down on a napkin.

“I don't have his phone number,” she says. “He's always switching it 'cause people won't take a hint. But this is where he lives.” She hands it to him.

He wants to ask why she gave it to him, if she knows Brian has a history with overeager former flings, but he knows the answer is because she feels sorry for him.

He'll take it, for now.

**

He hits the buzzer for Brian's building five times before he gets an answer. Low, growled over the tinny speaker. “What the fuck do you want?”

Justin winces. “This is Justin, from uh...the other night. When Gus was born.”

“Not now,” Brian says, and the line goes dead. 

So Justin rings it again, and again, expecting to get cursed out some more, but instead, eventually, the door opens. Justin takes the elevator up to the top floor—he and stairs aren't exactly best friends—and gets out right as the door to the loft clangs open.

Brian's in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. He's, pun intended, breathtaking. “Go away.”

“You let me up.”

“To tell you to your face that you cannot just show up here.”

He sees movement through the door, behind Brian, and God, this could not get any worse. “Someone's here.”

Brian gives him the same look Molly does when he says something stupid. 

“I just...I left a pill bottle here,” Justin says. “I just need to grab it and then I'll be gone. I swear.”

Brian keeps staring at him like he's a second away from yelling, but he moves to the side to let Justin through the door. Justin darts in and very intentionally does not look at the man sprawled on the couch with his legs open, who, from the sounds he's making, doesn't seem too pleased at being interrupted. 

Justin takes a moment in the bathroom to wonder how the hell this became his life. Two weeks ago he was going to art club and playing video games at Daphne's and fighting with his dad. He was a kid. And now he's in the apartment of a guy who's got to be thirty who's got another guy geared up and ready to go like some kind of...Justin doesn't even know the words for it, because this is _so not his life._

Maybe all of this was a mistake. Liberty Avenue, Brian, all of it. He's never been this over his head.

But he's overwhelmed by something besides his own body, maybe for the first time, and he kind of likes it. 

“Check the medicine cabinet,” Brian says. “It's where I keep all the party favors.”

There are indeed a lot of pill bottles in here. Justin would think he'd found another person with chronic illness if they weren't all recreational and mixed together. Adderall, Codeine, Gabapentin, Klonopin, Vicodin, Valium, a few prescribed to Brian, mostly not. Brian's headed towards an anticlimactic death choking on his own vomit if he keeps this shit up. “Not my problem,” Justin says softly to himself, and he finally finds the bottle with his name on it and slips it into his pocket.

When he comes out of the bathroom, Brian's sitting on the bed, pulling on a pair of jeans. The guy from the couch is nowhere to be found.

“He didn't love the interruption,” Brian says.

“God. I'm sorry.”

Brian shrugs. “You find them?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Brian stands up and crosses to where Justin's standing. God, he's tall. He looms over Justin like a spirit.

“You're warm,” Brian says.

“What?”

Brian touches the back of his fingers to Justin's forehead. “You have a fever.”

“It's nothing,” Justin says, and he doesn't even think that's why he's warm now. It's Brian, this close, the buttons on his jeans still open, his chest still bare. Touching him.

Brian nods. Accepts this.

It's strange.

And Justin thinks about going home, about having to come up with an explanation to his parents about where he's been and why, about putting up with his mother's fretting and his father yelling at her to stop babying him when she is literally just trying to keep him alive, and even stranger words come out of his mouth. “I want to stay,” he says.

And Brian just says, “Okay,” and a minute later their clothes are off.

It isn't like the first time, when Brian was slow and gentle, checking in with Justin every step of the way. He's still cautious, but he pushes more, telling Justin, try this, hold this, twist like this. It feels like a test and judging by the expressions on Brian's face, Justin is passing.

It is like the first time in that it is the most incredible thing Justin's ever felt, like a wave breaking over his husk of a body.

“You ever been to Australia?” Brian asks him, when it's over.

“Have I what?” Justin says.

Brian gives him a look like, _well?_ “Australia. I'm going for work next week. I've never been.”

“Yeah, I have, actually,” Justin says, and they lay on their backs in bed for half an hour while Justin recommends restaurants and sightseeing spots and recounts stories of wildlife preservation and horrifying spiders and Brian snorts, and rolls his eyes, and listens.

“Come on,” he says eventually, when Justin thought they were about to go to sleep.

“Come where?”

Brian launches himself out of bed. “Dancing. Babylon.”

He feels like hell, but the sex loosened up all the shit in his chest and dancing will too, and he's only seventeen and beautiful once, so what the hell. Babylon is spinning lights and beautiful boys and Brian's friends with names he can't remember but mostly it is Brian, spinning with his eyes shut, arms in the air, Brian, Brian, Brian, and Justin thinks, _Oh no._

He gets home late to a father who's passed out drunk and a mother who doesn't ask where he's been, just sits with her arm around his shoulders while he coughs until he cries. He spends the next four days in the hospital.

 _Worth it,_ Justin thinks, and _Oh no._

**

Justin comes out to his mother in some delirious blur while he's in the hospital that he thankfully doesn't remember very well, and he's not sure why he did it except that suddenly the fact that he's gay seems so much less scandalous than the fact that he's now slept with _Brian Kinney_ four times (bed, shower, bed, kitchen counter after returning from Babylon) that hell, why not tell her. She'll think he has a crush on some boy on the football team. He's not really giving her anything, but it's the illusion that he is, and he wants her to feel like he's opening up because he loves her and feels hideously guilty all the time.

“I think you should see a counselor,” she says to him a few days after he's out of the hospital.

This is confusing for a number of reasons, largely because Justin already sees a counselor every few weeks. It doesn't do much for him, but it seems to mean a lot to his medical team, so whatever.

“You think you can scare the gay away?” he says. “It's not hiccups.”

She sighs. “I'm not trying to turn you...straight,” she says, lowering her voice on the last word like it's a slur, which he agrees it should be. “But this is obviously a confusing time for you and I think it would be good if you talked to someone.”

“Confusing. You think I'm just confused.”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

“Kind of sounds like you are.”

“Will you do it for me?” she says.

Justin sighs. “Fine.”

He runs in to Brian at Woody's that night and, once we gets his heart out of his throat, ends up recounting it to him, even though Brian's showing pretty much no interest and is invested in checking out someone on the other side of the bar, so God knows why Justin can't shut up.

“Nothing wrong with therapy,” Brian says.

“It's a waste of time. I can't be understood. I'm incomprehensible.”

“Are you,” Brian says vaguely.

“Entirely.”

“Hmm,” is all he says.

“She says she won't tell my dad, which is good because he'd completely lose his shit if he knew.”

Brian spares him a glance now, and Justin feels himself latch onto it harder than he would like.

“What did your parents do?” Justin asks. He feels himself trying, holding his breath and burrowing into Brian like a bird in a nest, and he feels, more than he feels shame or embarrassment or fear, that he does not want to stop. 

“I never told them,” Brian says. 

“They still don't know?”

“Not unless they've got a lot more friends on Liberty Avenue than I give them credit for.”

“Wouldn't have to be that many friends,” Justin says, and Brian fixes him with a glare. “You don't think it's important to tell people things?”

So maybe he's asking something else. So maybe he's wondering if this thing with Brian is a little stickier than it first seemed to be. 

Brian says, “It's your life. You should get to decide what people put in their picture of you.” 

“But you don't,” Justin says. “That's the whole thing.”

“Well,” Brian says. “That's why it's easier not to see them again. Let them think what they want, and you don't have to know.”

“Like a eulogy,” he says without meaning to, and he and Brian sort of blink at each other. 

Because that's what he's doing, Justin thinks. Brian is having a funeral every night for a version of himself that will never be again. 

Justin, for obvious reasons, feels something about that. 

And about the fact that, despite the premise, this is not the first time he's seen Brian like this, and he's starting to think it won't be the last. 

Brian leaves with the guy at the end of the bar, but it's fine, it doesn't matter. Brian doesn't even know his name.

But he knows Justin's. 

**

Liberty Avenue in the daytime is an entirely different beast, but Justin might like it even more. It's gay families and students and children. It's more than just fleeting dances and quick fucks, like the one he had with Brian on Saturday and some guy whose name he never got on Sunday. It's a future. 

Daphne's with him today, beautiful as ever in the sunlight, and they're roasting each other and talking shit about people from school while they root around someone's sidewalk sale when Justin looks up and sees two faces that take him a minute to recognize. By the time he's placed them, they've caught him staring, so he figures he better go over.

“Come with me,” he says to Daph.

“What?”

“Just come, I, uh, want you to meet some people,” he says. 

“Gay people? I'm in.”

“Very gay.” 

“Oh, there's a baby!”

“Hey,” Justin says as they approach. “Sorry, I was trying to figure out where I knew you from.”

Melanie studies him over her sunglasses. “Great, want to share with the class?”

“Sorry...I'm Justin, I was with Brian the night Gus was born.”

Lindsay nudges Melanie. “He helped name him.”

“Oh yes, I remember naming him very well.” Melanie turns to him with a wry smile. “Hi, Justin.”

He introduces Daphne, and compliments Gus, and then finally notices the bag in Lindsay's hand. It's a gift shop from the local art museum, Justin's favorite place of all time. “I love it there,” he says. “Did Gus get inspired?”

“Lindsay's trying to turn him into an impressionist,” Melanie says.

Lindsay rolls her eyes. “I'm an art teacher,” she says.

Daphne lights up. “You've got to see Justin's stuff.”

“Daph,” he says.

“No no, he's like really good. Like _really_ good.”

“I'm really not,” Justin says, though he kind of knows he is.

“I'd love to see,” Lindsay says. “Do you have anything with you?”

Justin gestures to his backpack. 

Five minutes later, her and Daphne are both in the backseat of their car, squished up next to Gus's car seat, on the way to somewhere new.

**

“These really are amazing,” Lindsay says.

Justin feels himself blush. “They're just sketches.” 

Daphne's on the couch, chowing down on the chocolate chip cookies Melanie set out. “Check out the sad ones in the back,” she says. “Those are my favorites.”

Lindsay takes her time getting to the back of the sketchbook, giving each drawing a chance—the ones of football players at school, and his parents. She gives him a smirk when she passes by the ones of Brian, but doesn't say anything, thank God.

She turns a page and says, “Oh, wow.”

Justin knows which one she's looking at. It's a picture of two lungs, gnarled and twisted and turning into tattered, dirty bird's wings. Not pretty wings, not flawless, but functional, out of this ruined body.

After a long beat, Lindsay turns the page, where Justin knows there are self portraits of himself, curled in on himself, balled up in pain, tearing at his skin. Eventually she looks up at him, her face full of questions. 

Everyone thinks he's just this sweet fucking kid.

Daphne raises her eyebrows at him. Asking if he's going to tell.

When, and whether, to disclose, is one of the most exhausting aspects of Justin's life. It's not like being gay, which, up until a few weeks ago, he'd told no one; being sick is not a secret. It's a strange combination of obvious to anyone who spends a lot of time with him and completely undetectable to anyone who doesn't. People at school know. People at his summer art camp didn't, because there was no reason for them to, though of course the counselors and nurses and stuff knew. People make it into something heavier than it is, but the truth is, Justin doesn't tell most people not because he doesn't want them to know, but because most people don't want to hear it. They're curious, and they think they do, but they don't actually want the truth. They don't want to have to figure out what to say.

But Daphne's sitting right there, radiating support, and God, she's been so good about this since they were little kids. It's not impossible. 

And Lindsay's seen the pictures now. 

“I have cystic fibrosis,” he says, and Daphne gives him a small smile.

Lindsay sets the sketchpad down. “Oh, honey.”

“I don't know how much you know about it,” he says. That's another awkward thing. It's weird to tell people you're dying if they already know.

“I know enough,” she says gently.

Justin nods and licks his lips.

“How are you doing?” she says.

“He's doing great,” Daphne says firmly, with a hard look at Justin, because she knows he can spiral a little when he has to think about it too much. He tries not to crunch numbers in his head. He tries really hard.

“I am,” he says. “For someone with seventeen years of this, I'm doing really well. I'm okay most of the time.” 

There's a knock on the door and Melanie comes out from the kitchen to answer it, and Justin _senses_ Brian more than he hears or sees him. He turns to Lindsay and mouths, 'He doesn't know,' quickly, and despite all his bravado about it not being a secret, it is suddenly very important that his one (two, three, four, five) night-stand doesn't find out. Not right now. There is nothing, absolutely nothing sexy about having a fatal lung disease in the living room of a house decorated in chartreuse. 

Brian cocks an eyebrow at Justin when he enters.

“Random collision of worlds,” Justin says. 

Brian's eyes follow the baby across the room, but he says, “Yeah, we've been having a lot of those,” and swats Justin on the back of the head on his way to the armchair. Justin bites back a smile.

“We were just looking at some of Justin's artwork,” Lindsay says. “You know he's incredible?”

“I've noticed some skills.”

Lindsay shows Brian one of the innocuous drawings, and Brian gives an innocuous “Hmm.” He points his chin at Daphne. “Who's this?”

“Daphne,” she says, like it's obvious.

“You with Justin? You're too pretty for him.”

“Oh, I'm _very_ aware.”

“This is fun,” Justin says, while Brian snickers. “This is very cute.”

“I was just about to tell Justin about the art show at the gay and lesbian center,” Lindsay says to Brian. 

“Must you indoctrinate him into the establishment homosexuals at such a young age?” 

Melanie says, “Yes, you and your Armani suits are very counter-cultural.” 

Brian says, “Hey, I do a _lot_ of drugs.”

“I could do an art show,” Justin says, mostly just to get a rise out of Brian, since he's against it. 

“Don't expect me to show up,” Brian says.

That's interesting.

Why would he? 

**

“It's raising money for an outreach program for at-risk youth,” Justin says, parroting Melanie's words, while his mother pounds on his back with cupped hands. He coughs and spits into a wad of tissues.

“Can I come?”

“It's a bunch of queers.”

“I'm sure I can cope.”

“No one else is going to have their mom there,” he said. “It'd be weird.” 

“I'll stay out of your way,” she says. “Just let me come? You know how I love your work.”

He has one of them just sitting on the edge of the bed together in the middle of the night, his head in his hands, or hand on his back like it is now. 

She's been seeing a therapist too, and he feels guilty about that.

“Okay,” he says.

**

Justin draws a few new things for the show and cleans up some of the sketches he already had. He includes some drawings of Liberty Avenue that he imagines might sell, and a few CF ones that probably won't, but maybe will make people think he's the kind of tortured artist they should buy the Liberty Avenue ones from. 

Daphne comes with him to the center to help set up, and God, it's such a relief how well she fits in here. One of the things he worried about the most with coming out was that he'd lose her. But she's always been good with his hospital friends too. No reason, he supposes, why this should be any different. He still needs to come out to them. Leo will be fine with it. Some of the others he's less sure.

Regardless, he's firmly in queer world tonight, not sick world. He's dressed cute and he's feeling good and Melanie and Lindsay are re-introducing him to all the friends who fawned over him at the hospital, and he feels warm and indulgent, today. There's no sign of his mother yet, but she's coming from Molly's soccer game so she'll probably be a little late.

And then who the fuck should waltz in but Brian. 

He will deny to his dying day the way his heart flutters. He grabs onto Daphne's arm, and she shakes him off with an eye roll. 

“At least pretend you're cool,” she says. 

Justin goes over to someone else's work and studies it like he cares, when really he's just so _aware_ of Brian, where he is in the room, who he's talking to, what he's looking at. He's making the rounds with a drink in his hand, sneering at his friends, flirting with Daphne, hasn't gotten to Justin's booth yet. Debbie from the diner is there, and she comes up to him and calls him Sunshine and compliments his drawing of his mother, and Justin smiles and nods and says hi to Michael who's here with some guy and _feels_ Brian slip over to his space.

Debbie wants to point out some detail of the diner in one of Justin's drawings, as if he won't know it's there, so she drags him over there and oh God, here he is standing next to Brian while he's looking at his work, and Debbie yells, “Emmett, sweetie!” and disappears and they are left alone.

Justin swallows and tries to sound casual. “What do you think?”

“It doesn't look like me,” Brian says immediately. Of course he'd zoom right in on the picture of himself.

“Who says it's you?” 

“Mmmhmm.” Brian looks at him with a half smile, and Justin smiles back, can't help it.

But then Brian gets to the pictures of Justin in pain, the drawings of hospital rooms. The lungs that feel like birds, or wish they did. He studies them and doesn't look at Justin, and doesn't say anything.

It's enough. “You know,” Justin realizes.

Brian shrugs a shoulder. 

Justin feels something rush through him like cold water. “Did Lindsay tell you?”

Brian squints at him. “I looked up the pills you left at my apartment.” 

“Oh.”

“Wanted to see if they'd get me high.”

“They won't.”

“Hence I didn't take them.”

Justin looks from the picture of his lungs back to Brian. Thinks about how many times Brian's slept with him since finding out. 

That night in his loft, when he knew Justin had a fever.

“You don't care?” Justin says.

“I'm not your nurse,” Brian says. “Why should I care?” 

Justin draws in a breath that sticks a little in his throat, and Brian shuffles his feet towards him, tilts his chin up with one finger, and kisses him so deeply Justin thinks it might kill him, and that would be okay. 

Except when they pull apart from each other, finally, he sees his mother on the other side of the room. Looking right at them.

Justin avoids her for the rest of the night. Lindsay snags him at one point and tells him one of his drawings sold. The one of his lungs.

**

“How _old_ is he?” Jennifer demands, her voice ringing through the kitchen.

“I don't...actually know,” Justin says honestly. “It's not important.”

“Sweetheart, you are seventeen years old and that is a grown man. You don't know what you're doing.”

“His age is not the issue here,” Craig says, prowling the kitchen tile like a caged lion. “Justin, why are you doing things with...and you knew and you didn't tell me, and...this is unbelievable.”

Molly peeks in from the hallway, and Justin forces a small smile and mouths 'It's okay,' to her.

It's funny. He's lived in terror for years about his father finding out he's gay, and now it just seems...funny. He and Jennifer feel so small, like he could pick them up in his hands and put them away on a shelf if he wanted to. 

“You realize if you get AIDS, you'll die,” Craig says to him, and Justin almost bursts out laughing.

Jennifer gives Craig a look to silence him, then puts her hands on the counter and leans towards Justin. “Honey. I know that you feel this...this need to experience everything. And I know you feel older than you are. But this isn't okay.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” he says. “For once, it has nothing to do with that.”

“Then sweetie—” 

“Somebody sees me,” Justin says. “Somebody knows that I'm sick and then asks me if I've been to Australia.” Someone knows about his shitty lungs and fucks him into a coma with no trepidation, but he figures he shouldn't say that part out loud.

“Justin.”

“He sees me,” Justin insists, and that's when his father slaps him across the face.

**

He still has the mark on his lip when his father rams his car into Brian’s, which is not exactly difficult to piece together.

Finding out Brian’s hurt—and this is before he finds out Brian is a drama queen who will crow that he’s on his death bed over a minor concussion—is terrifying in a way Justin both does and doesn’t expect. On the one hand, he’s always terrible when people he cares about are the ones who need help. It’s just _wrong._ He remembers hyperventilating in the bathroom when Molly broke her leg two years ago. He wants all the suffering to go to him, and that’s not sweet and it’s not selfless, because the reason is that after all this time he trusts people to take care of him but he doesn’t trust himself to take care of anyone but himself.

It’s not sweet and selfless.

On the other hand, he hadn’t realized that Brian would make the list of people he couldn’t stand to see in trouble, and that’s when he figures out that he’s in love with him. Goddamn it.

Anyway, Brian is fine, and Justin rolls his eyes at both of them and has a brutal coughing fit in the bathroom.

After the impromptu dance party, where Brian pulls him up, chooses him, and after Michael and his boyfriend show up and there’s some sort of drama there and everyone’s cleared out, Brian touches the cut on Justin’s lip.

Justin shrugs a little, and Brian shakes his head and hugs him with his arms loosely around his neck.

**

Despite everything, it’s a blissful two weeks.

Justin makes every effort to avoid his parents. He sleeps over at Daphne's. He sleeps over at Leo's. He stays up until 3 AM and sneaks in once they're in bed. They yell at him and cry and ground him over and over again, but there's nothing they can actually _do,_ Justin's realized. They're so small. Love is so big.

“So what's he like?” Leo asks. They're at the mall, lounging around the food court like they own the place. Leo's on oxygen all the time and looks sicker than Justin, and being out in public with him makes Justin feel more and less healthy at the same time, and both make him feel guilty. 

“Incandescent,” Justin says.

He's lost all hope of being cool and aloof and not obsessed with the first person to give him an orgasm. He sees Brian practically every night, runs into him at Babylon or Woody's or shows up at his loft when he's feeling particularly ballsy. Sometimes Brian shoos him away or ignores him or leaves with someone else. Sometimes he kisses him and lets Justin blow him in the back room and then shoos him away or ignores him or leaves with someone else.

But sometimes he doesn't.

Justin stretches out one night in the blue light of Brian's bed, watching the way shadows stretch and pull across Brian's skin as he walks from the bathroom back to bed. “I want to paint you,” he says.

“You draw me all the time.”

“That's why I said paint.”

Brian sits down on the bed. “I didn't know you painted.”

“Only sometimes. The fumes make my lungs act up.” It's the first time he's volunteered any information of this kind.

“Mmm,” Brian says. He crawls on top of Justin, pressing his chest against Justin's back. “Can't have that,” he says.

“No.”

“We need those lungs,” he says, and he works his mouth around Justin's neck. 

**

Brian's gently rolling on half a tab of E at Bablyon a few nights later, and it's making him clingy and affectionate, so Justin's about ready to slip some into his coffee every morning if it gets him like this. He sucks on Justin's neck in the back room and tugs him away from Emmett when they're outside. They make out against the passenger door of his shitty rent-a-car, and Justin feels somehow electric and relaxed all at the same time. If this could last forever, if he could stand here kissing Brian Kinney for the rest of his life, that would be okay. 

He'd miss the sex. He'd miss talking to him. 

But in this moment he doesn't feel like he'd miss much else.

And then his father appears and punches Brian in the face.

It's nothing like a fight from a movie, choreographed and smooth. This is all scuffling and struggling and missed blows, and it happens so, so quickly. Brian's on the ground, his father's hitting him, and Justin is wedged somewhere in the middle, or he would be if Emmett and Michael weren't holding him back. 

“Dad, stop! Stop! _Please!_ ”

Maybe Craig's just tired, or maybe something in Justin's voice gets to him. Justin has never known his feelings to have much affect on his father, but every once in a while, usually when he's very, very sick, Justin will see something like concern, like affection, in Craig's eyes.

And he sees it now.

Which means very little, considering he just beat the fuck out of Justin's...whatever he is.

Brian's off the ground already, lunging at Craig, but Emmett and Michael have moved to holding him instead and Justin is free, and he has no idea what to do with that. It occurs to him that he's not breathing well. 

“Enough of this,” Craig says. “This ends now. You are going to come home, you are going to get your life back in order, and we are never going to speak of any of this again.” 

Justin is not going back in the closet for anyone, and certainly not for Craig. “I'm your son,” he says. “Look at me, I'm your gay fucking son.”

“Get in the car.”

“No!”

“You come home with me right now, or you don't come home,” Craig says.

Brian curses—Brian, freshly mauled, is upset that this is happening to Justin—and if his decision weren't already made, that would settle it.

“I'm not coming home,” he says.

**

“I think my nose is swelling up,” Brian says. “Is it swelling up?”

“Not that I can see,” Justin says patiently, leaning against the door to the bathroom. 

Brian holds his chest on the way to the kitchen. “I think he broke my fucking rib.”

“Does it hurt in a really specific place? It would be really localized.”

Brian gives him a look as he opens the refrigerator and takes out a bottle of water. “He do this to you before?”

“No,” Justin says. “I've broken them coughing a bunch of times.”

Brian blinks, then mutters “Jesus,” and takes a long slug from the water bottle.

“Brian, I'm really—” 

“Don't,” Brian says. “We're not carrying on the glorious tradition of sons apologizing for their fathers. Last thing I need is to pass that shit down to Gus.” 

Justin isn't really sure how him apologizing will affect Gus in any way, but he starts coughing then, and Brian, who's getting pretty used to that at this point, ignores him and starts the process of turning off lamps and starting the dishwasher, putting the loft to sleep. Justin draws in a slow, careful breath and thinks about taking the bus and then walking the four blocks to Daphne's and feels very, very tired.

And Brian reads his mind, like he does when he's inside him, Justin's feet crossed behind his neck. “You can stay here tonight,” he says.

“Yeah?”

Brian shrugs. “Where the fuck else are you going to go?”

Justin moves to the couch and takes his shoes off, but the effort of that throws him back into coughing. A minute later Brian taps him on the shoulder with his water bottle, and Justin takes it and drinks gratefully.

“You know you sound like shit tonight,” Brian says. “And I'm going by your standards.”

Justin pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I know.”

Brian sighs, taking the blanket off the back of the couch and draping it over Justin's shoulders. “You don't have your meds, do you?”

Justin coughs into his fist. “No I do not.”

“Do you need them tonight?”

“I'll be okay.”

“Wheezing pretty bad.”

“That's just what I do.”

Brian drags his hand over Justin's shoulders, and he shivers a little.

“Okay,” Brian says. “Come to bed.”

“I should stay on the couch,” he says. “I'm going to be loud.”

Brian shrugs and says, “Suit yourself,” and Justin kicks himself and wonders why the fuck he expected anything different. 

Brian tosses him a pillow from the bedroom and Justin curls up on the couch, hitting his chest with the heel of his hand to try to knock some of the junk there loose. What he wouldn't fucking give for his vest and a saline treatment right now. Or somebody else's hands.

He wipes his eyes on a corner of the blanket as Brian shifts around in bed. 

Justin makes it ten minutes before he slowly, so slowly, creeps up to the bed and crawls underneath the sheets.

Brian doesn't even open his eyes. He stretches the blanket over Justin, throws an arm over him, and says, “Shh,” his palm rubbing circles on Justin's chest.

**

He's really in no shape to go to school the next day, but Brian, unfortunately, is dismissing the possibility of a mutual sick day and is dressed and headed out the door for work, and it's not as if Justin's going to stay here in the loft by himself. So he lets Brian drop him off, even though he's just going to spend the day camped out in the nurse's office anyway. At least that way he won't get written up for not having his uniform. God, Catholic school is some bullshit. He's not even Catholic. 

His mom is in there, talking to the nurse. It's not as unexpected as it should be. Justin sits down heavily on the couch and starts setting up a nebulizer treatment. 

“How are you?” his mother says.

“I'm all right.”

She sets her mouth. “Is Brian okay?”

“He'll be fine. He's pretty banged up.”

Jennifer sighs and looks away.

He says, “Tell me you didn't know he was going to—” 

“Justin, of course not,” she says, and he believes her. He saw her face when Craig hit him in the kitchen. 

He coughs and lies on his back on the cot, even though it makes it more difficult to breathe, just so he doesn't have to look at Jennifer and her nurse buddy exchanging looks, worrying about him.

“Want to check your peak flow, Justin?” the nurse says.

“I'm okay.”

“Sweetheart,” Jennifer says. “Let me take you home.”

“I'm not going home.”

“Justin.”

“I'm sick of sneaking around,” he says. “Everyone fucking knows what I'm doing anyway. I'm not going to go live in that house and act like I'm straight anymore. It's over. That Justin's gone.”

The nurse is politely pretending not to listen. 

“Nobody's asking you to be straight,” Jennifer says, but by her face she realizes that's a mistake the second it's out of her mouth.

Justin can't help saying, “Oh really,” anyway.

“Your father does not speak for this entirely family,” Jennifer says.

“He always has before,” Justin says. 

He knows his mother loves him. He knows she'd move heaven and earth for him.

But he also knows she has never, ever, just told Craig Taylor to shut the fuck up already. 

So no, he's not going home. 

**

He spends the day, as planned, camped out in the nurse's office, and when he gets back to the loft—where else is he going to go—it's dark and quiet. He still feels like trash, his chest and throat aching from coughing so much, so he crawls into bed and does slow breathing exercises until he falls asleep.

He wakes up to the loft door sliding open, heavy footsteps towards him, and then a huge duffel bag dropped on the foot of the bed. He flinches and sits up.

Brian looks somewhere between furious and exasperated. “How many fucking medications are you on?”

“Uh.” Justin runs his hand down his face. “A lot?”

“I just had to listen through a fucking schedule of them, and this vibrating vest which is somehow _not_ a sex toy weighs about twenty million—” 

“Why do you have my shit?”

Brian throws his arms out. “Great question!” 

“Um—” 

“I met your mother today.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah. Yes. She dropped by my fucking office with this goddamn hospital you call a daily routine. Where the fuck am I even going to put this shit?”

It's...one bag, but that doesn't really seem like the point right now. “Wait, what are you talking about? I'm not staying here.”

“See, that's what I thought too, and then I started wracking my little brain and realized _where the fuck else are you going to go?_ ”

“I can go to Daphne's, or—” 

“Daphne has cats,” Brian says exhaustedly. “You will wheeze to death by day three.”

“Christ, my mother really did give you the rundown.”

“I'm saying.”

Justin pulls the covers off of himself and crosses his legs. “Listen, this is ridiculous. I can't stay here. We'll kill each other.”

“Yeah, after today, don't threaten me with a good time.”

“I will find somewhere else to go.” 

“Yeah, you will. But for now...” Brian shrugs and gestures carelessly at him. “Take your clothes off.”

“What?”

“You look hot. Take your clothes off. You still sick? I'll go slow.”

“Okay.”

**

They're strategizing at the diner, circling apartments in the paper looking for the rare Venn diagram of places that look like they have elevators and won't care if he's not eighteen. “And preferably they have to be free,” Justin says. “Free would be great.”

“Your mother gave me a check. I'll be more than happy to cover your first month's rent.”

Debbie comes by and sets down Justin's burger and Brian's chicken salad. “I think it's wonderful you two kids are shacking up,” she says.

Justin never really understood “if looks could kill” until this moment. 

“Doesn't the center have a shelter for homeless youth?” Brian says.

Justin blinks. “I'm legitimately dying of a chronic disease.”

“Yeah, so I've heard.”

“You're still coming for dinner on Sunday?” Debbie says to Brian. Oh, turns out she's Michael's mother, which is a trip and a half. Bet he didn't get kicked out of the house when he came out. 

“Yes, mother.”

“And you'll bring Sunshine here.”

“I _literally_ don't know what else to do with him, so sure.” 

Justin's halfway through with his burger already, so he goes ahead and orders an ice cream sundae with extra whipped cream and chopped nuts, and Brian stares at him as Debbie walks away.

“How many calories is it you need with CF?” Brian asks.

“About thirty-five hundred.”

Brian doesn't blink.

“It's actually kind of annoying,” Justin adds.

Brian leans across the table and gives him a long, deep kiss.

Justin laughs. “What was that for?”

“I'm hoping it's contagious.”

He doesn't joke about that that night, when Justin wakes up in a flailing panic, feeling like he's drowning. He gropes around for the covers, Brian, _something,_ and Brian says, “Hey, easy, easy, you're okay,” in a voice so much softer than he'd use in the light. 

He sits there and watches while Justin sets up the nebulizer. Justin clings to the mouthpiece with both hands, eyes screwed shut, _easy easy you're okay._

Brian's hand comes down and rubs circles on his back.

Justin isn't expecting Brian to say anything. There's nothing really to say. Waking up unable to breathe is scary every time, but it's not new and exciting. He doesn't really need anything.

But finally Brian says, “You do this every day,” like he's realizing it.

“Yeah,” Justin says. “Every single fucking day.”

**

That's the worst part about chronic illness, really. It's the chronic half, not the illness.

There's no pause for when you just don't fucking feel like doing it. There's certainly no let-up when you don't feel well; it's just more work then, more responsibility when you don't feel like you can do anything more complicated but lie there and die. There's no room for burnout. You can't ask for an extension or take a personal day. 

Every single fucking day.

Sometimes Justin's glad he won't live all that long.

**

He's feeling better after a few days. He and Brian settle in to some semblance of a routine. They grocery shop together and argue over what to buy. They fight over the remote. They regularly make each other laugh so hard that _neither_ of them can breathe. They have sex two, three, four times a day.

It doesn't feel sustainable, but it doesn't feel bad, either.

Jennifer calls often, checking in, and Justin makes the mistake of asking if his father's changed his mind, and then another mistake of trying to get Brian to commiserate about his own father. Brian disappears and comes back around three AM, wasted and weepy and babbling all sorts of shit, and Justin helps him out of his clothes and lays behind him in bed, running his fingers up and down his arm, his stomach aching in sympathy. Empathy.

“Breathe,” he whispers, as Brian cries softly into his pillow. “Just breathe.”

**

On Sunday they pack up and head to Debbie's for dinner. The tiny house is warm and bright and bustling with Michael and his boyfriend and Emmett and some guy he brought and Ted and...no one. Lindsay and Melanie show up with the baby and Brian promptly abandons him to play with Gus, so Justin finds himself wandering into the kitchen to help Debbie. 

Emmett's in here too. “Deb, where's Vic?” he says.

“At the pharmacy, should be back here soon. Fucking lines at that place. And he hasn't been feeling well, either, and now he's got to stand for twenty hours waiting. I told him to let me go, but nooo...”

Emmett changes the subject, but Justin's intrigued, and as soon as there's a natural pause in the cooking he slides out of the kitchen and back to the living room, where Brian's sprawled on the floor next to Gus, who's wiggling around on a blanket. Justin gives Gus a kiss and says, “Who's Vic?” quietly.

Brian crawls his fingers up Gus's stomach. “Debbie's brother. He lives here.”

“What's wrong with him?”

Brian glances up at him, then back at the baby. “AIDS.”

“Oh.” 

Brian looks back up at him. “That okay?”

“Yeah. I have to stay six feet away so we don't pass shit back and forth. It's not a big deal.”

“All right,” Brian says, and Justin catches him quietly filling in Deb and just loves him. Sure enough, when the table's set, Justin's on the opposite end of the table from Vic, who's just blown in through the front door.

The distance doesn't matter in any sense besides medical. Justin can't stop looking at him. Vic looks sick in the same way Justin does—underweight, pale, sweaty, but only if you're looking for it. They could both pass for healthy unless you catch them just right. They both take pills before they eat. Debbie fusses over Vic and scolds him and hits him with her napkin and they joke about the pharmacy and the medication side effects and the table chuckles along, and Justin finds the courage to throw in some of his grosser CF stories and gets groans and laughs from everyone, especially Brian. And Vic.

He ends up alone in the kitchen with Vic, briefly, after dinner's over and most everyone's left or is lounged around the living room. Vic says, “So you're the one who's—” 

“Dying of CF? That is me. And you're the one who's—” 

“Dying of AIDS, yes.”

“How's that going for you?” Justin asks with a laugh.

Vic considers. “Not bad. And you?”

“I'm not hating it,” Justin admits, and Vic grins. 

Debbie gives Justin a big hug at the door and tells him to come by the diner more often so she can fatten him up, for fuck's sake, and Brian kisses Vic and makes some joke about New York Justin doesn't understand, but he likes seeing Brian be kind to someone.

“You're quiet,” Brian says in the car. 

“I'm thinking.”

“Care to share with the class?”

Justin chews on his thumbnail.

“Spit it out.”

“Do you think Debbie and Vic would let me live with them?”

**

Justin moves in exactly a week later. Part of him is sad to be leaving Brian's, to no longer have constant access to his laugh, his quirked eyebrows, his dick, but they were maybe three days away from Brian screaming at Justin for leaving his shit everywhere and Justin screaming at Brian for being a persnickety control freak, so it's for the best. 

And even though it was Justin's idea, it still feels like Brian putting Justin some place where he can still keep an eye on him, and Justin likes that very much. 

Debbie has a meeting with him as soon as he gets there to discuss what he needs, what she has to know, what time he's allowed to bring tricks home. He shows her how to set up the nebulizer and starts drawing her, her face calm and sure, as soon as she leaves Michael's little bedroom.

Brian calls him that night. Justin's using the vest, so his voice comes out shaky and robotic, but Brian's heard it before.

“So how is it?” Brian says.

“Well, there's a distinct lack of metal pillars in the middle of the room,” Justin says.

“I keep telling her to work on that.”

“It's good,” Justin says. “How's being alone?”

“I'm never alone,” Brian says, and sure enough, Justin thinks he can hear a voice in the background.

“You called to check in on me when you have a trick there?” Justin says.

“I did not call to check in on you. I wanted to ask if you stole my fucking—” 

Justin can't stop laughing. “Oh my God, you are so in love with me.”

“I'm hanging up now.”

“Talk to you soon, sweetie,” Justin hopes he gets in before the line goes dead.

**

The move ends up being kind of worthless, because he spends most nights at the loft, and when he doesn’t Brian usually crowds into Michael’s bed with Justin, bitching all the while. But Justin likes living here. He loves Debbie.

He adores Vic.

Justin comes back from a jog one morning, panting, and Vic watches him over his glasses. “I thought one of our perks was not having to exercise,” he says. “I went from the bed to the chair today and I’m expecting the national anthem to start playing for me any minute now.”

Justin laughs, his hands on his knees. “It helps with airway clearance,” he says, and then coughs for ten thousand years.

“I can see that,” Vic says.

Justin takes a deep breath. “See, nice and clear.”

“How long will that last?”

“Oh, minutes at least.”

“We’re really living large here,” Vic says, taking the top off a pill bottle, and Justin grins.

**

Brian takes him to a doctor’s appointment one morning, and on the way back they stop for coffee. Brian points to an ad for lip balm in the window of the nail salon next to the Starbucks.

“That yours?” Justin says, and Brian nods while he sips his latte.

It’s cute. Pretty girl whispering in a guy’s ear, the lip balm in her hand, swirly letters that say “soft enough for a secret,” which Justin doesn’t fully understand, but it’s fine.

“What?” Brian says.

“Nothing, I would have just done the font in a different color.”

“What color,” Brian says immediately.

“Maybe a teal?”

Brian studies the ad for a second, then takes a step back and says, _“Fuck,”_.

“Sorry.”

**

He has lunch with his mother every Saturday, and sometimes she picks him up at school or at Debbie’s and hauls him back and forth. Justin spends the weeks before Christmas shopping with either or Emmett, who's a fucking riot, and then she and Molly blow off their father for Christmas and come celebrate with him and Debbie and Vic and Michael and David, which is lovely, even if it involves a church service and Justin's got a bone to pick with God for some obvious reasons. Brian shows up late in the day and gets drunk on egg nog and makes out with Justin between the reindeer display and the felt portrait of Jesus, and Jennifer rolls her eyes but that's about it, so he'll call it a win. 

He lies in bed with Brian after everyone's gone, tracing shapes on his chest with his forefinger, and says, “Can you help me with my Physics homework?”

“Yeah,” Brian says, without opening his eyes. 

**

He's pretty healthy until mid-January, when he wakes up with sinuses full of tar and a headache he can't believe. He's so out of it he forgets Brian's coming over, and he never forgets Brian's coming over. 

He's asleep on the couch when Brian comes through the front door, and he sits up and winces as he rubs his eyes. Brian's face is squished into something between disgust and sympathy. “You look fucking terrible.”

“I think it's just a cold,” Justin says. His voice is completely shot, and Brian winces.

“Could have called me,” Brian says.

“Why, so you'd bring soup?”

“Or stay home,” Brian says. “One of the two.” But he comes over and kisses the top of Justin's head, flattening one palm against his chest. 

He ends up staying. Brian fucks him nice and gently on the couch, where the risk that someone could get home any minute turns them both on, and then they mostly lie around and watch movies and yes, Brian even makes soup. It's nice, but Justin's feeling worse and worse as the night goes on, and by the time ten o'clock hits he's falling asleep sitting up and can't remember when he last wasn't coughing. 

Brian's lounging on the floor, and he reaches a foot up and nudges Justin's knee. “You need your meds and shit.”

“Come with me,” Justin croaks, and Brian groans but follows him upstairs, and he flips through Michael's old yearbooks and tells Justin who the sluts were in their graduating class while Justin does a nebulizer treatment and a session with his vest and tries to listen. His face is throbbing, and he flops down on his pillow and presses his face into the mattress.

Brian climbs on top of him. “Pooooor sick Justin.”

“Shut up.”

“So very pitiful.”

“I'll sneeze on you if you don't shut up.”

“Gross.” Brian rolls off of him and Justin turns over, burrowing into Brian's side. 

“Sorry I'm pathetic and gross and annoying.”

“Do me a favor?”

He thinks he'll probably die if he tries to do anything, but all right. “Okay.”

“Don't say that shit again.”

Justin doesn't say anything, and Brian sighs.

“I don't like stroking people's egos,” Brian says. “Even yours. You know that shit isn't true. You think I'm fucking you, what, out of sympathy? Is this your Make-a-Wish thing?”

“I already did that. I went to the Grand Canyon.”

“Leave it to a fag to go see a giant hole,” Brian says. “Look, I will say this once. You're not pathetic. You're not annoying.” He pauses.“You are kind of gross.”

Justin smacks him.

“See, that's what I'm talking about. The whole point was for me to deny it, tell you you're not.”

“No it wasn't,” Justin says petulantly. 

“It's boring, and it's a waste of time,” Brian says. “Don't waste time.”

Well. It's hard to argue with that. 

**

“Justin.” 

Brian's face swims in front of him. It's morning, and the light is hurting his eyes, and everything is hurting his everything, and he curls up and starts coughing.

Brian cups the back of his neck. “You're burning up and you can't breathe. I'm taking you to the doctor.”

Justin nods, still coughing, his head pounding as it moves. He obeys Brian's commands in a blur, pulling on sweatpants and putting on his shoes and leaning on him on the way down the stairs. Brian parks him by the door, and Justin hears him in the kitchen saying something to Debbie, but he's too out of it to care. Brian comes back over and puts his hand on the small of Justin's back. In the car, he dozes with his forehead against the cool window, and when he's awake he's aware of Brian's small, almost non-existent head turns, checking on Justin out of the corner of his eye. 

He's feeling a little better by the time they get to the doctor's office, just from being out of bed and moving around and coughing some shit up, but he still thinks he's probably screwed. Sure enough, his doctor takes a look at his sinuses and checks his temperature and says, “You're going to have to go be admitted.”

Justin groans.

“You've got a nasty sinus infection and I want you on IV antibiotics for a few days,” his doctor says. “Go home, pack a bag, show up at the ward. You'll probably be out by the weekend.” 

Justin sighs and rubs his sore face. “Yeah. Okay.”

He goes back out to the waiting room to deliver the exciting news to Brian, who's leafing through a copy of _Lungs Monthly_ or something. “I have to be admitted,” Justin says.

“Admitted to what?”

God, healthy people. “The hospital. CF ward.”

Brian puts the magazine aside. “Jesus.”

“It's really not a big deal. I have to go to the hospital if someone looks at me wrong. This is...not out of the ordinary.”

Brian watches him.

“It's okay,” Justin says. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

They head back to the house and Justin does a saline treatment which does a lot to make him feel more human, and then starts packing up a bag for the hospital. Brian sits on the bed and looks awkward.

“Shouldn't you be at work?” Justin prompts.

“It's fine.”

“It's just you're kind of sitting on a shirt I want to pack.”

Brian raises an eyebrow. “You don't want me here?”

“I...you're like radiating concerned boyfriend and it's freaking me out.”

“I am not your boyfriend.”

“Which is why it's freaking me out.” Justin stuffs some CDs in his bag. “Look, if you're planning on sticking around for any length of time, you can't get scared over a sinus infection. You'll burn out before I do.”

“Burn out doing what?” Brian says. “I'm just sitting here.”

Justin wheezes out a sigh and stops packing, looks at him. 

“This is what I was saying last night,” Justin says. “I'm a lot to handle. And I don't actually want to waste time apologizing for it either.”

“Then don't,” Brian says, with a shrug, like it's the easiest thing in the world to do. Like Justin hasn't been trained since birth to be as small, as quiet, as invisible as he possibly can be. 

“I'm fine,” Justin says. “Even when I'm not fine, I'm fine. I need you to get that.”

Brian watches him.

“I am not going to be your tragedy,” he says. “You're not going to look back when you're old and I'm going to be this sad beautiful thing that happened to you. I'm not happening _to you._ I'm just happening. So that is not the story.”

“Sunshine.”

“Yeah.”

“The story is that you're sick today and I feel a little bit bad for you. It's not a cause for histrionics. Pack your shit and let's go.”

**

Justin starts to feel a little less weird about Brian's reaction when it's clear that, compared to all these other new people in his life, that was a low-key display. Debbie fills his room with silk flowers and Get Well Soon cards from everyone who's ever set foot in the diner and brings him food several times a day. Vic can't come to the ward, but he calls every afternoon to check in. Emmett visits and honest-to-God looks like he's been crying. 

His family's a lot more used to this. Molly texts him to say she hopes he feels better, and his mom drops by twice with Daphne to bring him homework and play cards. They're used to this, and their lack of any real concern keeps Justin feeling grounded. Everyone else has him sort of convinced he's about to die. 

Leo's in the hospital too, is there more often than not these days, and he and Justin hang out from six feet apart and it's nice to not have to pretend to feel decent. Leo has some hopeless crush on another girl in the ward, and they're doing a lot of Victorian exchanging letters and meaningful glances, and Justin can't imagine a romance where he's not getting the absolute shit fucked out of him a dozen times a week, but all the more power to Leo. 

Speaking of, Brian comes by two of the four nights that Justin's locked up. He crosses his dress shoes up on the bed and makes eyes at every male nurse who walks in and otherwise acts like they're out at Woody's or hanging out at the loft. 

But sometimes he asks questions, and Justin likes answering them. Most people are too shy to ask.

“Why do they put the IV in your chest?” he says. “Shouldn't that be in your arm?”

“I have a port,” Justin says.

“A what now?”

“It's like...a permanent IV line underneath my skin. So instead of having to place a line every time, they can just stick it right in there. Saves a lot of time and keeps my veins from collapsing.” 

Brian stares at him blankly.

“Sick stuff,” Justin simplifies.

“Ah, I see.”

Justin gets to go home on Sunday morning, only slightly after his doctor promised. He's always foggy and sleepy after a hospital stay, so he showers and falls into bed and sleeps the day away. When he wakes up and wanders downstairs, David and Michael are there, playing bridge with Vic and Debbie, listening to oldies over the scratchy record player.

They don't notice him, and Justin sits down on the couch and watches them and smiles.

**

Babylon is germy and sweaty and exhausting, but God, there's nothing else like it. Justin never knew how much he loved to dance until he started dancing with Brian. 

He doesn't even know how to describe what he and Brian are anymore. He is, as he recently reminded him—and maybe he needs to be reminded sometimes—not Justin's boyfriend, and he's constantly sleeping with anything with a dick and still tends to blow Justin off when he wants him the most, but there's something so stable and steady about it, something so predictable about the unreliability. It's a dance, and Justin is learning how much he loves that. With Brian.

It's fucking astounding how beautiful he is. 

Brian grins in the strobe lights and sticks his tongue into his cheek.

**

“You know, when I suggested birthday sex, what I had in mind was fucking your brains out,” Brian complains.

“You fuck my brains out every night.”

“Christ, you make me sound like a housewife.”

“I mean, a really good housewife.”

“True.”

Justin paces around Brian's bed, examining where he's spread out, legs wise, eyes almost as. 

“I'm not going to hurt you,” Justin says.

“You don't know what you're doing.”

“I've topped like four guys before. I know what I'm doing.”

“Wow, four?”

“Shut up.” Justin says. 

**

Brian hits his back after, rhythmic pounding with cupped hands. He's getting good at it. 

“You really are all grown up,” Brian says.

Justin coughs and spits into a tissue. “Mmmhmm. All hail the king.”

Brian kisses over his ear. “Long live.”

**

“Say it again,” Debbie says.

Justin laughs and draws it out. “The Pittsburgh Institute of Fine Arts.”

“Look at our baby,” she says, whacking Vic with a dish towel. “A fucking fine artist.”

Vic says, “Well, when they're finished with him, anyway.”

“Don't be such a fuckin' wet blanket! Sunshine is already a star.”

“You two are freaks,” Justin says. “And I don't even know if I'm going. My dad has to agree to pay for it, and I haven't spoken to him in....a while. And he's never been too amped about the art thing.”

“Ask your mom, then,” Debbie says.

“My mom will do what he says,” Justin says. “Eventually she always does what he says.”

Still, it does seem easier to break the news to her first, so he heads over to the house while Craig should be at work. She hugs him and kisses him and wants to see what pieces he applied with, and then says, “This is such an honor, but...” and Justin sees it all falling apart right in front of him.

“Overrule him,” Justin says. “Tell him this is what I want. Give him some sick kid bullshit about how I deserve to be happy, whatever it takes.”

“I can't do that, honey.”

“I have heard that so many times. I am so sick of that.”

“Justin,” she says. “I can't do that because it's not my money anymore. We're getting divorced.”

**

He arranges to meet Craig for coffee. The whole thing feels very adult. He is eighteen now, after all. Got the bite marks on Brian's back to prove it. 

Justin lays out the brochures from PIFA and shows his dad some of his more recent work—he's never discouraged Justin from drawing, just from making it a career, and he's even been known to like a few things Justin's made and hang them in his office—and Craig listens and nods. “I know you probably want me to go to Yale or Dartmouth or something,” Justin says. Both of which he got into, despite his spotty attendance record. Score one for the spoonies.

Craig says, “Actually...there's something else I'd like you to consider.” And he starts laying out his own brochures.

It's an experimental treatment in Boston. The brochure tries to talk around it, but it's all-consuming, violent, and painful. It's a year of inpatient. A year. 

“I know this is a lot to ask,” Craig says. “But the results have been really promising. This could give you four, five more years.”

“In exchange for giving one up.”

“You more than anyone know how to have a life while you're hospitalized,” Craig says. “And your mother and I would visit—”

“I was just in the hospital two months ago,” he says. “You didn't visit. You didn't even call.”

Craig looks away, then back at him. “Justin, what have my mother and I always told you that we wanted?”

Justin could recite this in his sleep. “To have me for as long as you can.”

“This would keep you here for longer,” Craig says. “If you won't do that for yourself...can't you do it for me and your mother?”

**

Michael puts down the brochure. “I don't even understand what any of this is saying. You need to speak fuckin' Greek or something.”

“Latin, mostly,” Justin says morosely. 

Emmett comes over with his arms full of beers. “What's going on?”

“Justin's thinking about doing this hardcore CF treatment,” Ted says. 

Emmett wrinkles his nose. “What do they do to you?” 

“It's just really intense drugs, basically,” Justin says. 

“Well, that just sounds like a fun Saturday night.”

“I know a girl who did it,” Justin says. “She nearly died just...from the treatment. It's that kind of brutal.”

“Why the fuck are we talking about this shit?” Brian says into his whiskey. “This is Woody's, not an episode of St. Elsewhere.”

Emmett smacks his shoulder. “This is Justin's life we're talking about. You could try to give a shit.”

“Listen to him, he's not going to do it,” Brian says. “Why are we wasting time confusing Michael when we could be out getting laid?”

“Actually I think I might do it,” Justin says.

Brian puts down his glass.

“Really?” Ted says.

“It's one year in the hospital in exchange for four or five years alive. Mathematically it makes sense.” 

“It's one year of excruciating pain,” Ted says.

Justin coughs into his wrist. “I can handle it.” Ted probably considers a bee sting to be excruciating pain. 

Brian studies him.

“What?” Justin snaps.

“Nothing,” Brian says. “Do what you want.”

**

Justin doesn't see Brian for a few days, and he spends it faking his way through school, hanging out with Daphne, and lying on his back on his bed, imagining a hospital ceiling. 

Imagining pain so bad it made Allison, the girl he knows, say she wished she would die. 

“Would you do it?” he asks Vic. 

“You can't trick me into that,” Vic says. “You have to make this decision on your own, kiddo.”

“We're supposed to do everything possible to live for as long as we can,” Justin says.

“We're not supposed to have these fucking diseases in the first place,” Vic says. “I'm not sure _supposed to_ is the thing to fall back on here.”

Justin thinks that over.

“But like I said,” Vic says. “Don't let me sway you. I had thirty healthy years. We're the same, but we're not the same.”

“That doesn't matter.” 

“You have never felt well a day in your life,” Vic says. “Whether or not you know that.”

Justin doesn't say anything.

“You get to decide when to say when,” Vic says. “Even though you've never fucking gotten to before.”

“I guess this is what being an adult is,” Justin says, but Vic shakes his head a little.

“No, honey,” he says. “Most people don't have to do this. Never forget that.” 

**

Brian comes up behind him at Babylon that night. “Well well well, if it isn't the bionic man.”

Justin rolls his eyes and sips his beer. 

“Why the fuck are you doing this?” Brian says calmly.

Justin turns to him. “'All we want is to keep you as long as we can.'”

“What?”

“That's what my parents used to say to me when I was growing up. Whenever I didn't want to do a treatment, whenever I tried to hide it when I was sick, whenever I pushed myself too hard. It was, Justin, please don't do this, all we want, the only thing we want in the whole world, is to keep you as long as we can. Do you know what it is like growing up dying? It's fucked up, Brian. I don't know why I'm trying to explain this to you.”

“What's fucked up is them saying that to you.”

“Shut up, Brian. You don't know anything.” 

“They just want you around, they don't care what condition you're in? They don't care if you're happy, or tied down to a bed screaming?”

“Well, I don't think it's quite that dramatic.”

“Your parents are getting divorced whether or not you go get this treatment,” he says. “You know that, right?”

Justin looks away.

“Saving you will not save them,” Brian says. “And that goes both ways, for the record.”

“It's four more years.”

“It's not a guarantee and you know it. You want to live forever? Go to PIFA. Paint a picture. Live forever.”

“I don't want to live forever.”

“How long do you want to live?”

Nobody has ever, ever asked him that before.

“As long as it takes,” he says, not really knowing what he means, but Brian just nods.

“You're not going to find it locked up in Boston,” Brian says.

“Did you know what you were getting into?” Justin can't help but ask. “That night when you looked up what my pills were, when you found out. Did you know that you'd be doing this?”

Brian laughs. “Of course not.” He finishes his drink and leans into Justin's ear. 

Justin doesn't feel tears anymore, just his heartbeat.

“But it's too late now,” Brian says. “There's no going back.”

**

“Nineteen more days,” Brian says, hanging backwards off the side of his bed. “Nineteen merciful days until I become the oldest faggot known to man.”

“That does seem accurate, yes.” Justin's in the bathroom, prodding at his chest in the mirror. 

“Stop touching yourself and let me fuck you while I can still get it up.”

“I think my port's swollen,” Justin says.

“Your what?”

“My port, the thing under my skin. You don't listen.”

“Come here,” Brian says, and Justin lumbers over to the bed and shows Brian the lump on his chest. Brian presses on it with two fingers. 

“Ow.”

“Does it usually hurt?”

“I don't know, I don't usually go around poking at it.”

“You cannot be getting sick again.”

Justin laughs coldly. “Oh, you rube. I can always be getting sick again.”

“Well, if they're going to admit you tomorrow, at least let me fuck you tonight.”

“Sounds fair.”

**

He is, of course, getting sick again, and it's serious this time, but it's weird because it's not his lungs or his sinuses. It's his blood. His port is infected, and he's teetering on the brink of sepsis and freaking everybody out. 

It's just one fucking thing after another, and he's so tired, but there's some relief in the fact that this would have disqualified him from that treatment anyway, even if he hadn't already told his father he wasn't doing it. 

It drags on and on. Some days he feels up to going out in a wheelchair and smiling at his visitors and hanging out with Leo. Others he's wracked in bed with chills and incomprehensibly high fevers, crying into his pillow and begging for his mom, or Daphne, or Brian, Brian, Brian.

Brian's there sometimes and not others, and everything blends together into one horrible endless suck of a day, so it's hard to keep track. He brings books and movies and music and fucks Justin in the shower stall on the days he feels like he can stand, but Justin's so tired he can barely enjoy it.

Sometimes Brian brings his briefcase and just works quietly in the chair by Justin's bed. Justin likes those times. He's feeling okay tonight, and he's on his laptop answering some emails and watching a DVD when Brian says, “Tomorrow's the day,” like a man being led to his execution.

“Is it?” Justin has no idea what day it is.

“Thirty,” Brian says. “The end of the road. I'll be officially indoctrinated into the pantheon of ancient queers.”

“I don't like my birthdays either,” Justin says, hitting send on an email to Daphne. “Time passing and all that.”

Brian's quiet, and then says, in a rush, “Remind me what the average age is for—” 

“Twenty-eight,” Justin says, without looking up from his laptop.

Brian draws in a slow breath and lets it out. “God.”

“Don't.”

“Nothing, I'm just....shutting up now.”

Justin smiles a little. “Good. Do that.”

**

He's allowed to have one family member stay with him at night, and God knows who Brian paid off or fucked to have himself included in that, but somehow he ends up staying over a night or two a week. Jennifer comes another two, and other than that Justin's alone. Craig, of course, never shows. 

Brian calls late one night when he's not there. Justin's up, nauseous from the antibiotics, doing the breathing exercises he's known since he was a little kid. 

The topic du jour is Michael and David breaking up. “About fucking time,” Brian says. “That guy was more boring than listening to you talk about antibiotic resistance.”

“I could die, you know.”

“So you keep promising.”

“Why aren't they just trying long distance?”

“I'm the wrong person to ask. A door and twenty-four hours is too long distance for me.” He pauses. “Are you hitting your chest?” 

“Yeah.”

“Helping?”

Justin coughs. “Not really.”

“Call an RT to do it, moron.”

“It's the middle of the night.”

“I'm pretty sure that's literally why you're in a hospital. To get medical care. Constantly.”

“An RT will beat me up,” Justin says. “I'm so fucking sore. Not now.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Justin clears his throat. “So how's Michael?”

“Oh, he's a fucking mess, as you'd expect. He's moving all his stuff back into his old place, it's all very dramatic.”

“You worry about him really.”

“I worry about myself. And the hours of my life I'm wasting watching him reminisce about going to Paris and walking the blah-de-blah-blah with his dreamy, departing doctor. I dragged him out to Woody's eventually.”

Justin takes in a slow breath and imagines things that are not vomiting. “How was that?”

“Oh, you know. Emmett's quitting his job. Ted got a haircut. Stop me when it gets too exciting.”

But Justin starts crying instead.

Brian handles this with all the grace you might expect. “Um...hey, what are you doing? Uh...”

“Everything's changing,” Justin says.

“Ted got a _haircut._ ”

“I'm missing everything,” Justin says. “I've been here for three goddamn weeks, I'm losing my fucking mind, and I'm going to get out of here and everything's going to be different. Emmett will be a fucking paralegal or some shit. David will be gone.”

“Let's not pretend you give a shit about David.”

“My mom and Molly are moving into the new condo, I don't even know what it looks like. My dad's going to fucking Connecticut. In eight fucking million years when I get out of here everything's going to be different and I'm missing it.”

“So...so we'll tell everyone to wait.”

“We can't do that.”

“I don't know!” Brian sighs. “I don't know what to say.”

“There isn't anything. I'm sorry.”

Brian's quiet for a while, then he says, “Anyone who isn't willing to wait for you is a boring piece of shit who doesn't matter anyway.”

Justin does something between a laugh and a sob. “So everyone is a boring piece of shit.”

“That's right. You're missing fucking...housekeeping crap. It's nothing. It's going to be fine.”

Justin shivers and pulls his blanket around himself.

“Your teeth are chattering,” Brian says.

“Yeah.”

Brian sighs. “You don't need to worry about fucking Michael,” he says. “I've got it covered, okay?”

“That's a lot to have covered.” When he's still calling Justin to check in in the middle of the night.

“Yeah, well, I'm pretty amazing.”

Justin closes his eyes and hugs the phone to his ear.

**

“I don't mean to alarm you,” Leo says from his doorway. “But you don't look so great.”

Justin burrows under his covers and shivers. “You're the one on oxygen.”

“I'll give you a million dollars if you're not on oxygen next time they check your vitals. Where's Daphne?” Leo's CF non-girlfriend got discharged, so he's back to his longstanding crush on Daphne.

“She just left.”

“Damn it.”

“You're fucked anyway,” he says. “She's in love with Brian.”

“Something tells me that won't work out any better than me and Katya.”

“I don't know,” Justin says. “Brian thinks she's gorgeous.”

“Brian's got a good eye, then.”

Justin coughs. “I'll take that as a compliment.”

“So what do you think, is he madly in love with you?”

Justin chokes on a laugh. “No.”

“I don't know, he's here a lot...”

“He likes my company,” Justin says. “It's not that complex.”

“He brings you croissants,” Leo says.

“Yyyyes?”

“So,” Leo says, like it's obvious. “He wants you to be happy.”

**

Time passes. Visitors drop off, get bored, except Daphne and his mother and Debbie and Brian. Justin gets worse instead of better, but not in any dramatic and exciting way. He's worried he's going to die in the hospital, but he's always worried he's going to die in the hospital, so that doesn't really feel noteworthy. He keeps up with his schoolwork when he can and the guidance counselor promises he'll get to graduate, even if walking with his class isn't looking likely. “As soon as we can,” the nurses keep promising him. “We'll have you out of here as soon as we can.” But no one even wants to guess at when that is. 

Daphne comes by to show him her prom dress. She's going with this eleventh-grade boy she has no interest in, but she was too polite to say no when he asked her, and now she'll deny it to her grave but she's obviously excited about it. She changes into her pink sparkly dress in Justin's bathroom and dances with Leo in the hallway. 

Justin makes himself smile.

“You okay?” Daphne says.

Justin gestures uselessly. “It's the meds. Make me weepy.”

Daphne sits down on the foot of the bed, her dress crunching underneath her. “You weren't even going to go to prom, right? You said it was for straight kids.”

“I know. This is so stupid. I absolutely wouldn't be going even if I were out of here.” 

She reaches towards him and takes his hands in hers.

“This is so stupid,” Justin says again, and she brings their hands up to wipe his eyes.

**

“Pssssst.”

Justin cracks an eye open. It's sometime between Saturday and Sunday, and dark, or as dark as it ever gets in a hospital, and Brian's face peers down at him.

Justin bats him away. “Don't psst me.”

“Pretty sure that's the first time you've ever told me to _not_ do something to you.” He's wearing a coat, Justin realizes, which is bizarre since they're inside. And it's May.

“Okay, want a second? Don't wake me up when it's—” He checks his phone. “—two o'clock in the damn morning and I have a fever of a hundred and twelve.”

“So bossy. C'mon.” He pushes a wheelchair up to Justin's bed and helps him into it, arranging the oxygen tank and the IV. “You come with a lot of accessories, you know.”

“I'm sick and gay, it's my right. Where are we going?”

Brian pulls the blanket off the bed and pulls it over Justin's lap. Justin shivers and shoves his arms underneath it. “Somewhere nice,” Brian promises. “Now hush. We have to sneak past the nurses.”

That perks Justin up right away. “We're leaving the hospital?”

“Technically sort of.”

“What.”

“Shh.”

Brian wheels him down the hallway and Justin tries not to cough, or to ask one of the hundred questions buzzing around his brain. He takes Justin down to the third floor, then over the skywalk that connects one bay of elevators to another, and then down to the fourth level of a parking garage. 

Justin is about to make some joke about how this is all very romantic until the elevator doors open and...it is.

There are lights strung up, clear twinkly lights that make the parking garage look beautiful and haunted. Music is playing from somewhere, something old and slow. There's a banner strung up that says, “HAPPY PROM, JUSTIN.”

“You bought a banner?”

Brian rolls his eyes. “I have a whole art department.” 

“Brian...”

Brian parks the wheelchair and takes his coat off, and underneath he has on a black suit and a white silk scarf. He's stunning, his eyes glowing in the lights, and Justin lets himself believe for a minute, even though Brian owns a dozen suits, that he bought that one specifically to go to Justin's aborted prom. That this was always the plan.

Of course, it wasn't. He knows that. A grand gesture like this could only happen spontaneously, before Brian could talk himself out of it, call himself a girl or a faggot in his father's voice and push it all down somewhere Justin could never see.

Justin knows him, and he knows this is a big fucking deal.

Brian puts his hands underneath Justin's elbows to help him stand. 

“When did you do this?” Justin croaks.

Brian shrugs, his arms out. “I had an epiphany.”

“Which was?”

He crowds into Justin's space, lowers his voice into something sultry. “That we're young and we're beautiful and we should make the most of that.”

Justin pulls him down by his neck and kisses him, maybe like he's never kissed him before. Because he knows this isn't a Brian he can expect everyday. He knows he'll pay for this later, that Brian will be standoffish and snappy to hide that he let Justin know he gave a shit. So this kiss is giving him permission, for all of that. You keep on keeping on, you fucking gorgeous little weirdo. Run towards Justin and away from him at the same time. Justin will stay in place. 

Justin will stay here.

Brian puts his coat over Justin's shoulders and drapes the scarf around his neck. Oh.

“Stay warm,” he says, and he pulls Justin into him, just as the music switches to something ridiculously romantic. 

Justin can't imagine ever looking at anyone else's face, or feeling anyone else's skin. It has always, always been Brian. 

Brian spins him around with his feet off the floor.

It's like a fairy tale. 

**

Brian's gone by the time Justin wakes up in the morning, but it doesn't matter. He's still floating on everything. Leo makes fun of him for giggling so much. The nurses are happy he's in such good spirits and have no idea it's because he broke all kinds of rules last night.

And then Brian calls, and his tone changes everything. “Please tell me you have a cold,” he says.

Justin laughs nervously. “That's a weird thing to say to someone with CF.”

“Fuck. Shit.”

It hits Justin like a train. “You have a cold.”

“I have a cold.”

“Shit. Fuck.”

“Maybe you won't get it?” Brian says.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

**

He gets it, and he's in no shape to fight it off. 

It turns into pneumonia, which turns into sepsis, and Justin's not very conscious for a long time. It's the sickest he's ever been, and when he's not coughing he's vomiting, and when he's not vomiting he's crying. 

This is what they always warned him about. This is what you get and can't recover from. This is what kills.

He floats on glimpses of his mother holding his hand and the memory of Brian's voice. He asks for him. He doesn't come. 

_What did I do wrong?_ he thinks, and then he doesn't think anything for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be 5 parts total, one for each season.
> 
> A brief housekeeping note! I'm now on Twitter, where you can also find other links to support me: https://twitter.com/LaVieEnRoseFic


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